For two generations, Mercury offered the Villager minivan. A joint development with Nissan, who offered the near-identical Quest, the Villager soon found itself to be one of the smallest and least versatile offerings in a segment full of larger and larger minivans. For its third-generation Quest, Nissan severed ties with Ford and developed a larger model on the FF-L platform shared with Altima and Maxima. Lincoln-Mercury dealers were thus left without a minivan, but for 2004 they would receive one: the Monterey.

The Monterey was simply a Ford Freestar with different trim, such as a unique grille, analog clock and revised taillights, and a longer features list that included the rare-for-a-minivan availability of ventilated seats. The Monterey name was resurrected after three decades; previously, it had been used on full-size Mercury sedans.

Although the “all-new” vans still looked quite similar to the defunct Windstar, the interior was quite different. Ford had moved away from its swoopy dashboards used in the 1990s, and the new corporate look consisted off squared-off dashboards with neatly-arranged switchgear. Safety had been made a priority, and all three rows of the Monterey had curtain airbags.

During the 2000s, the Japanese were dominating the mainstream horsepower wars. Domestic automakers were left behind, offering aging engines like the Chrysler 2.7, Duratec V6 and Buick 3800, while offering more modern and powerful engines merely class-competitive in output as upgrade engines. The Monterey received the “upgrade” 4.2 V6 from the Freestar, omitting the lesser 3.9 V6. Both engines were descended from Ford’s long-lived Essex V6, but even the large-displacement 4.2 mustered only 201 hp and 263 ft-lbs. Fortunately, the 4.2 was sufficiently torquey down low: enough for the kind of driving generally done in a minivan. Where it fell down compared to rivals was in fuel economy, with an EPA-rated 17/23 mpg. Handling was also cumbersome, with an excessively-large turning circle and dynamics referred to by some critics as “barge-like”.

Ford had been touting its Freestar/Monterey as “all-new” minivans, and certainly there were meaningful engine, suspension and NVH improvements, but really they were just heavily revised editions of the Windstar. The same flaws remained, like inferior packaging: the vans were simply less spacious inside than rivals, with second-row seats that lacked sliding tracks and a third row that didn’t split. At least the latter folded flat, unlike in the Windstar. There were also omissions from the features list: stability control was only an option and satellite navigation was never available.

The revisions couldn’t reverse a sales slide. Freestar sales declined precipitously, while the Monterey never took off. Even the Buick Terraza outsold Mercury’s minivan each year, and sales volume was well short of the figures the too-small Villager had been achieving just a few years prior. Demand for minivans had very much cooled by the 2000s, and GM decided to exit the segment entirely. Ford would do the same after 2007: its namesake division would field three separate three-row crossovers in the next few years. Mercury wasn’t as lucky, stuck with only the Mountaineer truck. A few years later, the whole division was axed.

The Monterey was a typical badge-engineering effort to give Lincoln-Mercury dealers a wider lineup to sell. Ford had been swapping badges for years, so the Monterey was no more cynical than a Lynx or a Tracer. What was most frustrating about the Monterey can also be said about the nearly identical Freestar: it just wasn’t as good as its rivals. Ford spent money revising the Windstar inside and out and fine-tuning its dynamics, but they were still left with a minivan with below average versatility. At the end of the day, that was the Monterey’s biggest flaw.

25 Comments

Once upon a time I drove a Ford Freestar and remember absolutely nothing about it other than having low air pressure in one of the tires. Weren’t these at the height of Ford having all their cars start with an F and Mercury following suit with an M?

Every once in a while, my job requires me to speak to television reporters with the occasional live interview segment. One of the local stations has a fleet of these Mercury minivans with one of them serving duty as a broadcast relay vehicle (or whatever its called). Living that life they get used hard and do a lot of idling for remotes. While these were hardly memorable minivans, it certainly appears they are robust ones.

We had a number of Freestars with the 4.2 in the rental fleet back in.2006-07. I set a personal best time from the Pittsburgh airport 90 miles south to my office in north-central WV in one: ~45 minutes. They also had very easy to clean faux leather seats, which I appreciated. The transmissions felt worn out in most by turn-back time between 19-21k miles.

A co-worker – who is quite young – recently told me about a car he had seen, saying it looked like a hearse as there was a steel box over where the trunk would be. I asked if it was a station wagon; he asked what a station wagon was. I felt old.

About 20 years ago Ford introduced a new Galaxy (correct spelling !), and that was a minivan. It was a Volkswagen Group – Ford joint venture. Below a circa 10 year old model, so from the same era as the article’s Mercury. The Ford Galaxy MPV is still offered, alongside a whole range of smaller Ford MPV-models.

I see this Mercury has commercial plates and wonder if it is used by a business or the owner got those plates just because. Could have gotten commercial plates for my Voyager since I had a rubber floormat that kept me from installing the 3rd row and that is all my insurance company required. The rates and registration fees were the same I think, but I just got regular issues passenger plates instead. Wonder if this Mercury is allowed on the Long Island Expressway or other roads that ban vehicles with commercial plates? Did not realize the rear tailgate handle on these was so weak, how do you open it now?

A lot of small businesses out here repurpose minivans. I’ve toyed with the idea of taking an old one and using it as a package shuttle. My guess would be that this is a small business, or a tech service or supply business. Out here, the copier repair place runs an entire fleet of Pontiac Vibes. A minivan would make more sense in the space department….

As a lover of minivans I often lament over how many products came to market that just seemed half-ass. It’s hard to find a decent used minivan that doesn’t have a fatal flaw. We never got these Montereys in Canada, but even if we did, I wouldn’t buy one. I’ve heard and read too many horror stories about Windstars. Here on the west coast, like Eugene we don’t have rust issues so there are many older minivans still on the roads, but more often Mercury Villagers (or early Nissan Quests). The perfect minivan for me is my current 1996 Chevy Lumina. It’s rugged, has a low flat floor and a good power to weight ratio. And I like the quirky styling.

The U.S. Ford Flex is a fantastic people-mover and is effectively a good-looking minivan. Seating for seven, luxed-up interior, plenty of power (it’s actually fast with the 3.5 EcoBoost borrowed from the Taurus SHO!). I can’t understand why they don’t sell, because they’re fantastic.

I’m guessing the sales are lackluster due to the fact that they’re expensive, and that while the “big station wagon look” resonates well with car guys, it still is unappealing to a significant part of the population.

Regardless, I really like them, and if I needed a vehicle that size a Flex Ecoboost would be at the top of my list.

One of these popped up on the local Craigslist today with over 200k miles. I wonder how many transmissions it’s had. These were subject to the massive 2010 rear axle recall, as well as the lesser-known front subframe recall, both to belatedly correct rust issues that affected safety in a major way. I drove a few Freestars when working in rental cars. They were more buttoned-down (as they say) to drive than the super floaty Chrysler fourth generation vans, and overall much better pieces of engineering than the third generation GM U-Body “crossover sport vans.” They did not have the Stow-n-Go flexibility of the Chryslers, but were certainly more flexible than the sad GM efforts, what with the revolutionary (in 1999, from Honda) flip-fold third row. The front seats were flat and narrow, and the switchgear looked nice in a knockoff VW sort of way, but felt cheap (and, as they have aged, share VW’s penchant for button markings rubbing off, though the hard plastic Ford interiors warp and delaminate less than the oh-so-soft-touch VW cabins). When new, they just didn’t offer the absurdly low pricing of the GM vans or the low pricing and well thought out flexible interiors of Chrysler. The import brands were all head and shoulders above all three, with the exception of the laughably trouble-prone and awkwardly styled Quest. Add in the very flaky transmissions, engines that still hadn’t cured the Essex head gasket eating problem, and heavy fleet dumping destroying residuals, and the Freestar/Monterey were non-starters. Plus, the rust issues in later years, as well as the terribly nonexistent styling and the mix of names (Freestyle or Freestar – most people can’t tell the difference without seeing the vehicles; Monterey only held brand value with a few 50+ Mercury die-hards, and had no marketing support).

Windstar/Freestar/Monterrey could possibly be the most transmission failure prone vehicle of the era. Company I worked with in the early-00s had dozens of these as company vehicles, most had catastrophic trans failures in the course of their two year stints (mine included).

I was convinced that the Traction Control mapping had something to do with it – TC would engage, you’d back out of the throttle to stop the misfire and it would trigger a HARD upshift.

The early Windstars had horrible transmissions. They improved that transmission for later Windstars (AX4N replaced the AX4S). But then they did something unbelievably stupid: the Freestar got an engine with more torque and to make up for it they reduced the number of planets orbiting the sun gear from 3 to 2.

That’s typical for the Nasser Era. MCR – Material Cost Reduction – was the name of the game.

Every major design activity had to meet a target for taking cost out – you couldn’t add cost to make something better, not even when there was data demonstrating a potential issue. It’s why the backseat of practically every Ford vehicle of that time period became a No Map Pockets, No Power Outlet, No Fold Down Armrest Penalty Box.

The fracas from the elimination of the Touchpad was the ultimate expression of the Nasser Mentality.